I'll be covering two other major works of sf in this column: Always Coming Home, an extensive project finally published in 1985, and The Telling, published in 2000 and part of a recent burst of creativity on Le Guin's part. I'll also take a look at The Language of the Night, one of the many non-fiction collections that bring together Le Guin's thoughts on writing and other cultural matters. In terms of other genres, Le Guin has published many fantasy novels, the most notable among them the Earthsea series (once a trilogy, now an ongoing "cycle"), many books for children, volumes of poetry, several translations (notably of the Tao Te Ching and Angelica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial), mainstream novels, and short story collections. She's also edited or co-edited other anthologies, such as The Norton Book of Science Fiction. It's a sprawling oeuvre, so I've decided to focus on science fiction in this column.

What is The Dispossessed all about? Shevek is a scientist from the world of Anarres. As the book starts, he leaves his home planet and goes to the nearby world of Urras. What is he fleeing from? What does he hope to find on Urras? We don't find out the answers right away, but we gradually come to understand the two societies due to the straightforward structure. Alternating chapters tell the two aspects of Shevek's life: the ongoing story of his experiences on Urras, then his past experiences growing up and getting to the point where he has to leave Anarres.

While on Urras, he is kept away from the public and lives on a university campus. A number of scientists who understand advanced Simultaneity theory interact with Shevek, but they are clearly uncomfortable with many of things he stands for. Gradually, Shevek breaks free from the restrictions put on him, and comes to realize just how hierarchical and dangerous life on Urras can be. His only point of power is his promised breakthrough on the Principle of Simultaneity, which is a sort of macguffin, except that its potential of instantaneous interstellar communication shows up as the ansible in books that happen later in the shared Hainish history (as it's known) such as The Left Hand of Darkness. Everyone wants the Principle, and while the other scientists have glimpses of what it might be, only Shevek has the final pieces.

Urras is the society that is probably closer to our own, so Le Guin's anthropological creativity gets expressed in the society on Anarres. We learn about Anarres as Shevek grows up. It's a society founded on anarchical principles about 200 years previous by a woman named Odo, who was exiled from Urras at that time. Language and culture and custom have all been adjusted to create an aversion to property, to create a sense of community responsibility, and to make each person (somewhat paradoxically) totally responsible for their own actions. We learn a bit about Odo's ideals second-hand but where the story of The Dispossessed comes in, the society has calcified considerably. Shevek finds himself on the raw end of more than one deal during his life. For example, he somehow ends up with an emergency work posting that has nothing to do with science and takes him away from his lover Takver. He gradually comes to realize that the only way he will get his scientific work done is to go the propertarian planet of Urras. The end of the Anarres storyline ends with Shevek leaving his home planet with only the clothes on his back... which loops back to the beginning of the book and the start of the storyline on Urras.

One thing struck me on this re-reading of the book: whom does the title refer to? I had never thought about it before, but the obvious answer is Shevek himself, the most important character of the story, the one whose dilemmas and struggles are front and centre on virtually every page of the book. Perhaps that's one way of understanding the structure: as we learn how Shevek doesn't fit in on Urras, we also learn how he didn't fit in on Anarres. Both stories end up with him at the same point, leaving the planet he is on, with empty hands.

But it's a good title because "dispossessed" isn't necessarily singular. If it's taken in its plural meaning, the question raises itself again: whom does the title refer to? The people of Anarres have drifted away from their roots as permanent revolutionaries. They were exiled from Urras years ago, but have they truly made of Anarres a new home? Likewise, there are many dislocated people on Urras, as Shevek discovers much to the other scientists' dismay. To add to the layers of meaning, Le Guin has given the novel the subtitle "An Ambiguous Utopia" which is in itself as ambiguous as the title, and easy to misunderstand. We can take a good guess as to Le Guin's own leanings, in the matter of which planet might be a utopia and what might be ambiguous about it. But there's no direct binary opposition, as the book is sometimes painted. For example, it's telling that the Grafton edition leaves off the novel's subtitle, and calls Urras the "authoritarian hell-planet" on the back cover. Le Guin's novel is much trickier than that, in the way that the tendrils of meaning work their way through the book. Never mind a contrast between anarchist heaven and authoritarian hell; the book resolves into something more like an examination of human nature under two diverse circumstances.

The Dispossessed is an excellent book, with influence that has resonated through many subsequent books (especially Joan Slonczewski's A Door Into Ocean). It's a foundational work in Le Guin's career and a foundational work for the field of science fiction.

The second section concludes with a short piece, "Do-It-Yourself Cosmology," about the need for careful scientific speculation in sf.

The third section, "The Book is What is Real," has a title that refers to Le Guin's assertion that books stand apart from the lives of their authors. The section mainly consists of introductions that she wrote to her books after they were first published, i.e., once she had a few more years of perspective. Le Guin readers might already be familiar with these (for the record, the introductions are to Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Word for World is Forest, and The Left Hand of Darkness). Three essays about other writers are included here (Tolkien, Dick, and Tiptree).

The third section concludes with an essay on The Left Hand of Darkness, "Is Gender Necessary?" (1976). This is combined with the comments Le Guin added in 1988. The original essay seems to defend the use of "him" and "his" in Le Guin's famous novel about androgynous characters. The later comments show that Le Guin had totally changed her mind, and also her unease that her earlier uncertainty had been taken as such a blow to feminism as a movement.

The fourth section, "Telling the Truth," has a few short pieces about writing.

The concluding section, "Pushing at the Limits," has just two essays. The first is an excellent essay about Evgeny Zamiatin, "The Stalin in the Soul." Le Guin uses the biography of Zamiatin, a man who was persecuted for his writing and ideals, to argue persuasively that we need to do more with our freedom. "We are free, freer perhaps than any writers or public have ever been" (219) is how Le Guin puts it, and she also points out that while modern societies don't have censorship as such, there are the imperatives of the marketplace. An inspiring essay.

"The Stone Ax and the Muskoxen" from 1975 is about how sf is on the verge of breaking out of its ghetto. Le Guin says in her 1989 introduction, "I was perhaps more hopeful than wise" (3). This discussion across time, between Le Guin of the 1970s and the 1980s, is part of what I like about this revised edition. Le Guin is fully engaged with the world of ideas and, like any thinking person, she reserves the right to change her mind. The Language of the Night is one of many demonstrations of Le Guin's keen intellect.